Todd Allen wrote:
- WP:OWN is a perfectly valid objection there. Anyone who edits an
article (in good faith and without vandalizing, of course) is a contributor to that article. There's already some nasty, pernicious "Oh, you've only edited this article once, so you've got no real say in what goes into it" attitude going around. Quite often, the talk page of a given article can be just as cliquish, insular, and unfriendly to newcomers (especially newcomers who bring new ideas) as those backwater policy and guideline pages. We need less of that attitude, not more.
Obviously new contributors must be welcome to an article - in that sense WP:OWN is quite right. The problem is with a different type of WP:OWNer - the group that is enforcing some stylistic pattern that they have agreed - or some standardized infobox REGARDLESS of the view of those working on the article - who are actually more knowledgeable about the subject - think. (And, let me say I'm not anti-infoboxes, providing that the the actual box improves the article and isn't there because someone has decided that all articles of boxes of type x must have boy y, regardless of the details of the article).
Let me give some concrete examples:
I was working with others on the bio of a 16th Scots cleric, [[David Beaton]] when folk arrived and promptly moved the article to [[David Cardinal Beaton]]. When those who know Scots history objected that he's never known as that - and that major historical works and contemporary records never call him that, we were informed that the stylistic guidelines decreed that this was how all Roman Catholic cardinals MUST be denoted - and if we wanted to discuss it and reach a consensus we could not do so on the article's talk page - but we must go the the 'Roman Catholic Clergy guideline' page and get the meta-policy changed. That's clearly unacceptable - and led to edit wars.
It happened again when folk created a standardized clergy infobox and started applying it to all clergy. It had a standard field for 'Christian denomination' - which was fine for folk of the last few centuries - but was then applied to Christians in the first few centuries of the church - declaring all of the fathers and apostles to be 'Roman Catholic' - became clearly POV.
On another occasion I wrote a historical biography with all available information (there is no more) - to find someone with no knowledge of the field flew by from wikiproject biographies - marked the article for expansion - a need of an infobox - and in lack of an image (when none actually exist) - and then walked away. I challenged him to help with improving the article - but he was no in the least interested.
I could go on. Obviously new contributors to articles are welcome - WP:OWN is no good. But, at the same time, fly-bys who know nothing about the subject and are not willing even to stop and think 'what would benefit this particular article? How can it be improved?' - need hit with a cluestick.